


Fork you, then.

by this_is_a_love_story (diner_drama)



Category: Fleabag (TV), The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:34:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22434238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diner_drama/pseuds/this_is_a_love_story
Summary: "Watch out, Boo!" I shriek, throwing myself into the cycle lane to push my best friend out of the path of an approaching phalanx of bicycles and back onto the pavement.The world goes white for a second.All at once, I find myself sitting on a comfortable, overstuffed sofa in a bland, warmly-lit room. Blinking my eyes open, I read the bright green text splashed across the opposite wall."Welcome! Everything is fine."
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 92
Kudos: 160





	1. Chapter 1

"Watch out, Boo!" I shriek, throwing myself into the cycle lane to push my best friend out of the path of an approaching phalanx of bicycles and back onto the pavement.

The world goes white for a second.

All at once, I find myself sitting on a comfortable, overstuffed sofa in a bland, warmly-lit room. Blinking my eyes open, I read the bright green text splashed across the opposite wall.

"Welcome! Everything is fine."

Improbable.

A door in the wall opens, and a petite blonde woman steps out into the room, a tight-lipped but polite smile on her face.

"Hi there," she says. "I'm Eleanor. Come on in."

I follow her into the office, which is classy, in an 80s hotel reception kind of way. 

"This is my assistant, Michael," she says, gesturing to a handsome older gent in a sharp suit who's hiding behind a plant. Very relatable.

She picks up a folder and shuffled through some papers, and I slide awkwardly into the chair opposite her, feeling like I'm walking into a job interview.

"You are dead," she says, far too calmly.

"Are you sure? I don't feel dead," I joke. She doesn't laugh. 

Oh no, I'm in hell.

"You're in the Good Place," she continues. "Thanks to your selfless and wonderful acts down on earth, you have earned your place here in paradise."

Before I can stop myself, I snort. "Standards are really slipping, then." I am incredibly uncomfortable.

A muscle twitches in the side of her face. "According to your file here, which I can totally read, you've done some amazing things. Michael?"

I look back over my shoulder as he rouses himself a bit, giving his head a shake. "Saving your friend Boo-" he offers.

"Oh right," I say, remembering suddenly. How did I forget my best friend trying to commit suicide via cyclist? I turn back to... Eleanor, was it? "Can I see her? Is she OK? She's not dead, too, is she?"

"Let's see." She makes a sharp gesture, throwing a holographic screen into mid-air, and Boo's face appears, tear-stained but physically unharmed, having a massive panic attack on the pavement. Classic Boo.

"Boo is just fine. Would you like to see how you died?"

No. God no. 

"Yes, thank you," I hear myself say. 

Oops.

She brings the video up on the floating screen. Ugh, I hate watching videos of myself. Is that really what my nose looks like from the side?

I was expecting to see myself get hit by the first bike. I was not expecting the second or third. Or the bus that liquefied me after I got flipped into the road.

What a waste. My arse was having a real renaissance this month.

I can't tear my eyes away for what feels like an eternity, even when all there is on screen are paramedics attending to the pile of goo and crunchy bits that was formerly my body.

"What happens now?" I ask hoarsely. "Is there some kind of trial or, I don't know, application form?"

"No, your points total has already been calculated. We know for a fact that you belong here in the Good Place."

"That cannot possibly be the case."

She balks a little before plastering another polite smile onto her face. "How about I show you around the neighbourhood?"

"Listen," I say desperately, "I'm a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can't even call herself a feminist, so this is either an elaborate prank or you've made a terrible mistake."

She's unmoved. Fuck, I only pull out the brutal honesty as a last resort.

"We don't make mistakes," she says, with the firm conviction of someone who definitely makes mistakes.

"Fine," I acquiesce, resolving to drop the matter for the time being. "I'm ready for the tour, I guess."

The neighbourhood is, in a word, heavenly. There's no other way to describe it - everything is clean and beautifully designed, with verdant greenery and a frozen yogurt shop on every corner. All of the people I encounter are blandly, disturbingly cheerful and friendly.

Literally not one single person has laughed at my jokes so far. I might scream.

After a short stroll through the streets, while Eleanor points out the various features and amenities available to me, we arrive at what is apparently my house - which is, I have to say, objectively nice. A red-brick townhouse tucked in a corner of a charming little cobbled street, with climbing roses trailing over the front door and freesias bursting from the window boxes. 

Inside is a comfortable-looking, reasonably chic bachelorette pad, featuring a well-stocked wine cellar, a shower big enough to host an entire rugby team (goals), and a living room mantelpiece covered in framed photos of my family and friends.

My gut tightens as I see Boo's smiling face beaming at me from behind the glass, flashes of memory assaulting me. Mum, dad and Claire are watching me from an old family photo, seeing right through me. I squeeze my eyes shut and turn away from their accusing faces.

I want a cigarette. Are you allowed to smoke in heaven?

Eleanor's voice drifts through my panic. "-sometime around seven, just as an informal getting-to-know-you," she's saying.

"Sorry, what?" I have to ask.

"Ugh, I'm sorry, I don't know how to talk to British people," she says. "You probably have different words for stuff. Uh, Tahani would call it a soiree?"

"Tahani?" I ask, clearly having missed a few steps in this explanation.

"It is I!" announces a six foot tall Amazonian goddess, striding dramatically through my front door. "I heard my name and thought it would be a good moment to make an entrance. I am Tahani Al-Jamil. Welcome to the neighbourhood."

"Wow, everyone here is really attractive," I try. Hey, if I can't make them laugh, I can at least flirt a bit, right? "This really must be heaven."

"It really is," says Eleanor with another tight, insincere smile. I look around the room. Seriously, no takers?

"I'm just here to bring you a little welcome basket, with some home-baked scones and clotted cream, and to invite you to tonight's soiree," continues Tahani, as though I hadn't said anything.

"Knew it," whispers Eleanor to Michael.

Tahani air-kisses me on both cheeks and makes her exit, leaving me with a basket of baked goods and an expensive-looking card proclaiming the location, time, and dress code of the party in gold letters. Informal evening wear, apparently.

I hear a knock at my door.

"That should be your next-door neighbour," says Eleanor, unlatching the door as though she owns the place. Which I guess she does? "He said he'd come say hi after he'd settled in."

Thank Christ, maybe he's a normal person. I swear, if someone doesn't either laugh at my jokes or fuck me in the next half hour I'm going to die. Again.

Eleanor ushers him in and he steps through the open door, holding a bottle of wine and waving with his other hand. I take him in, the handsome wave of his hair, the way his shirt strains over his biceps... and the dog collar around his beautiful neck.

Oh fuck. He's a fucking priest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor paces the room, going through her mental checklist. "OK, so we've got to get them both drunk at the welcome party tonight, which should be easy, and then we can get some material for the chaos sequence. Hey, Janet?"
> 
> "Hello," says Janet, materialising with a pop.
> 
> "How's," she waves a hand vaguely, "Priesty McPriestFace doing?"
> 
> Janet beams. "He is currently drinking a glass of wine and trying to suppress an erection."

Eleanor closes the door of Tahani's second-best parlour and huffs out a breath. "That was a toughie."

"Really?" says Tahani, arranging herself fetchingly on the chaise longue. "I thought she reacted as we expected."

"We knew she was going to try to convince me she didn't belong here _and_ that she was going to try to sleep with everyone, but nobody told me she was going to be _hot_ ," she groans, tipping her head backwards. "It is going to be super hard not to flirt with her."

"You need to contain your chaotic bisexual energy for just a little while longer," says Michael, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"And you're no use, man! Are you going to have a nervous breakdown for every new arrival?"

"Seems like, yeah," he admits. "But you did a great job. I really think this neighbourhood is off to a good start."

Eleanor paces the room, going through her mental checklist. "OK, so we've got to get them both drunk at the welcome party tonight, which should be easy, and then we can get some material for the chaos sequence. Hey, Janet?"

"Hello," says Janet, materialising with a pop.

"How's," she waves a hand vaguely, "Priesty McPriestFace doing?"

Janet beams. "He is currently drinking a glass of wine and trying to suppress an erection."

"Perfect!" says Michael, clapping his hands. "Oh, sorry, I forget that humans find it impolite to discuss their genitals."

"Don't worry, I forget that too," says Eleanor. 

* * *

The priest had been having a perfectly ordinary day at the seminary, which for him meant burying himself up to the neck in books for the morning, before heading off to Mass. He was just making his way to the dining hall and making polite conversation with Father Hackett, when he caught a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye. Shoving the elderly priest back through the chapel doors to safety (eliciting a muffled "feck!"), he bared his teeth at the fox and tried to shoo it back into the bushes. Instead of retreating, the fox decided to give chase and the priest, emitting a strangled yelp, scrambled backwards, falling heavily as he tripped over a gravestone and toppled backwards into an ancient well.

The world went white, and then he opened his eyes and read the text on the wall opposite.

"Welcome. Everything is fine."

A quick scout around the room revealed no foxes lurking, waiting to ambush him. His shoulders slumped in relief and he let the feeling of calm emitted by the place suffuse him with a deep, lingering sense of peace.

The door in the wall opened and Eleanor stepped out. 

"Hello Father, I'm Eleanor. Come on in." He smiled at her and walked through the door into her office.

"This is my assistant, Michael," she said.

"Is he OK?" whispered the priest, leaning close.

"Yes, this is just his process," said Eleanor cryptically. "Please, take a seat."

He shot one last concerned look at the gibbering wreck in the corner and sat down. "OK. So..."

"You are dead," said Eleanor, not unkindly.

"Fork," said the priest, and then frowned. "Sorry, I was trying to say fork."

"Right there with ya, pal," muttered Eleanor. "You're in the Good Place."

"Wow," he managed. "This is a lot to take in. Is there - can I drink here?"

"You sure can. Janet?"

A smartly-dressed woman popped abruptly into existence.

"Fork!" yelped the priest.

"Hi!" said Janet. "I'm Janet."

"Janet, can we get some margaritas please?" asked Eleanor. Two full glasses the size of soup bowls materialised in Janet's hands and the priest let out a confused whimper. 

"Thanks, Janet," said Eleanor, and the woman blinked out of existence as suddenly as she had appeared.

Gratefully, the priest reached for his glass and brought the salt-encrusted rim to his lips. Draining the cocktail in three sips, he cleared his throat. 

"So, what now?"

His new house was a bit of a shock. Yes, it looked like a charmingly ramshackle old monastery, and yes, the library was absolutely perfect, but the bedroom was... a lot.

"From your life on Earth, we've designed precisely the sanctuary that your heart desires," Michael was saying, gesturing around the room.

'Sanctuary' was one way to describe it. The other way would be 'excruciatingly embarrassing yet strangely arousing sex dungeon of his dreams.'

He spluttered for a minute. "I'm a forking priest!" he protested.

"You're in the Good Place," Eleanor reminded him, her eyes alighting with interest on a padded spanking bench tucked into the corner of the room. "You don't have to follow those rules any more."

He backed out of the room, shaking his head and making a silent vow to sleep on his sofa for the rest of eternity. The idea of having no rules to abide by filled him with terror, and wasn't really worth addressing until he'd had some time to come to terms with the whole _being dead_ thing. The fragile balance of his internal peace had been disrupted enough already.

In the meantime, he could just... do priest stuff. Go around helping his neighbours, read his books, burn some incense... yes. Nothing had to change, not yet.

With this in mind, he was delighted to be asked to help settle his new neighbour into the neighbourhood. He was excellent at bereavement counselling, and dying is a bit like a bereavement, right?

So that was how he found himself clutching a glass of wine like a security blanket, and having a terrifying conversation with his neighbour - who just so happened to be the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Fork.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tahani's house looks like the Palace of Versailles had a baby with the compound of a Central African dictator, and then the baby was coated in gold leaf and forced to read nothing but copies of Harper's Bazaar for thirty years. 
> 
> Knew it.
> 
> "Darling!" coos the towering skyscraper of beauty and tits, meeting me in the lavish foyer and looking completely immaculate in a lavish ballgown and elbow-length gloves. "I love your little black jumpsuit," she says. "Of course, I could never wear something like that because of the size of my bosom."
> 
> Wow. 

I'm assessing my outfit in the mirror and wishing, for the thousandth time on this weird as fuck day, that Boo were here to give me advice.

I wonder what she's up to, how she's coping with all this. Probably a mess. I'm a mess. Usually we're synchronised messes.

I think vaguely of Harry. We were in an off-again stage in our on-again, off-again relationship when I... died... but I'm pretty sure he's going to be distraught, which is flattering, but also a _lot_ of work for whoever has to deal with him.

It's nice, in principle, for someone to be in love with you - but in reality, the moment someone falls in love with you they start expecting you to be responsible for their feelings.

Harry has a _lot_ of feelings.

Briefly, I consider popping next door to ask my new priest friend for his advice on my outfit, but considering his staunch refusal to even glance at my tits (rude), and his stammering exit after I suggested he help me out of my dress (promising), he probably doesn't have an eye for the aesthetic I'm going for.

I give my hair a last critical once over and decide that I look amazing enough to head out to Tahani's... I'm guessing mansion? She seems like the type.

* * *

Tahani's house looks like the Palace of Versailles had a baby with the compound of a Central African dictator, and then the baby was coated in gold leaf and forced to read nothing but copies of Harper's Bazaar for thirty years. 

Knew it.

"Darling!" coos the towering skyscraper of beauty and tits, meeting me in the lavish foyer and looking completely immaculate in a lavish ballgown and elbow-length gloves. "I love your little black jumpsuit," she says. "Of course, I could never wear something like that because of the size of my bosom."

Wow. 

"Let me introduce you to Jianyu," she continues, gesturing to a gormless-looking man in orange robes, with cheekbones you could cut yourself on. He gives me a deep bow and contemplates me mutely.

"He's taken a vow of silence, you see," says Tahani. "Such fun!"

"Right," I say politely, not quite sure how to respond. Is everyone here some kind of quasi-saint? Am I seriously the only bastard in heaven?

"Father," says Tahani over the top of my head. "I'm so glad you could join us."

"Hello," he says to the room at large, then he turns to me. "Hi," he says more quietly.

"Hi," I say.

"You look lovely," he says to me in an undertone, a helpless look in his eyes, and then snaps his mouth closed as if to keep the rest of his thoughts inside his head.

"This is Jianyu, he's a buddhist monk," says Tahani after she's air-kissed the priest to within an inch of his life.

"Oh, um, namaste," says the priest, with a polite little bow. Adorable.

"Father," says a grinning hunk in a green pullover and a pair of unnecessarily thick-rimmed glasses, striding forwards with his hand outstretched. "I've been looking forward to meeting you. I'm Chidi Anagonye and back on Earth I was a moral philosophy professor. Come with me for a drink, I have _so_ many questions about theology I want to ask you." He's bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. Cute.

"Right," says the priest with a half-smile. "I'll just..." He follows Chidi over to the bar and immediately pounds back a tequila. Man after my own heart.

Michael accosts me next, wearing a pair of suspenders over his shirt and sporting a new and magnificent bow tie.

I find it quite hot, but so would anyone else with daddy issues.

Beckoning me to the other side of the bar, he hands me a glass of wine and claps me on the shoulder earnestly. "We are so happy to have you here in the Good Place," he tells me. "It's very rare that people get in here just for being a good friend, but your relationship with Boo - wow. I mean, that was really something special. Tell me more about the significance of the guinea pig. Do humans often use rodents a symbol of affection?"

Stalling, I take a sip of my wine, and it's so familiar... it tastes like a night spent with Boo's neighbour, the lights turned down low and the music throbbing. It tastes like unbuckling his belt and leaning in for a kiss. It tastes like his lips.

It tastes like I don't fucking belong here.

"I-" I start. Suddenly, I can feel eyes on me from all directions and it's unbearable. Nobody can see this. Nobody should see this.

I can't. I just fucking can't.

As I flee the room, the world blurs around me and I have to gasp in a shaking breath to keep from collapsing. I find a quiet corner between two frozen yogurt shops and slump onto the ground to spend a few minutes silently hyperventilating.

I hear the sound of footsteps on the cobble stones outside my secluded alleyway.

"Hello?" says the priest tentatively, peering in.

I wipe my nose on the back of my hand. Gross.

"Sorry," I call out. "I'll be fine, I just need- oh, hello," I say as he sits down beside me, his (lovely) shoulder brushing against mine. He's holding a packet of cigarettes, a handkerchief, and a bottle of gin.

God, he's good at this.

I honk my nose unattractively into the handkerchief and try patting at my smeared mascara, which is probably a lost cause. He lights a cigarette for me and I take it with shaking fingers. The slow inhale and exhale and the burn of the smoke as I take a drag grounds me a little and I manage a small smile.

"Thanks," I say. "I'm sorry you had to leave the party."

"It was all a bit forking much in there, anyway," he says, blowing out a breath. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I hesitate. "It's nothing."

"Go on."

"I just..."

"What?"

"I had this friend," I force out, "and I forked..." I'm just going to say it. I'm just going to say it.

I can't say it. 

"...forked everything up," I finish lamely. Not technically untrue, either. "And now I can never make it right because I'm forking dead."

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely, turning to face me and tracing one tear track down my face with his thumb. His hand is so gentle, and for a second I think he's going to lean in to brush his lips against mine.

"Can you hear that?" he asks suddenly, jerking away and craning his neck to look around the corner.

"Hear what?" I ask, and then the rumbling sound catches my ear.

I jump up and peek around the building just in time to see a massive guinea pig, the size of a small car, come thundering down the street.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Janet?" she calls out, and Janet pops into existence. He can't help but let out a distressed whimper, still not at all comfortable with the new laws of physics in this place.
> 
> "Hi!" says Janet cheerfully.
> 
> "What drink is best for running away from your problems?"
> 
> "All of them," beams Janet. 

"Father, I've been looking forward to meeting you. I'm Chidi Anagonye and back on Earth I was a moral philosophy professor. Come with me for a drink, I have _so_ many questions about theology I want to ask you." 

"Right," says the priest, unwilling either to leave the company of his new neighbour or to poke at the teetering Jenga tower that is his internal moral compass at the moment, but rather too bound by politeness to decline. "I'll just..." 

He follows Chidi over to the bar and makes a beeline for the tequila.

"Your mind must be _buzzing_ ," enthuses Chidi. "I read your undergraduate thesis on St. Thomas Aquinus' writings about cardinal and theological virtues. I thought your take on it was really interesting."

"Oh, thank you," says the priest reflexively. "Yes, it's been a lot to process."

"I'd be really interested in sitting down with you so we can go though the Good Place criteria and compare it point-by-point with the ideas of sin and virtue from the Catholic doctrine."

"Yeah, um, we could do that sometime," says the priest without enthusiasm.

"Ooh, we're gonna have so much fun," chirps Chidi, visibly wriggling in excitement. "I mean, this has been the whole moral basis for your existence, and now we can determine analytically whether it's _true_ ," he continues, as though this is a good thing. "I remember that your central argument was that the concept of the reward of the afterlife and the certainty of divine law were necessary for a person to have peace during their time on Earth, and now, here you are in the afterlife! With the promise of heaven already fulfilled! How can we reconcile the idea of peace as you postulated it with the reality of what you're experiencing now?"

"I really haven't given it that much thought," says the priest, downing another shot of tequila and privately thinking that he didn't particularly want to give it any more thought.

He wheels around at the sound of a glass smashing behind him, just in time to see his neighbour fleeing the room in tears.

"I'd better-" he says gratefully, backing away and then exiting the conversation at a brisk jog.

* * *

The giant guinea pig was a bit of a surprise, but at least it wasn't a fucking fox.

"I wonder if this is someone's idea of heaven," he muses, watching it as it thunders off down the street. The first guinea pig is followed by a second, then a third. "That's a bit threatening, really," he amends, shrinking back into the alleyway a little.

"We've got to get out of here," she mutters, pulling him away.

"I don't know if anything can actually hurt us here," he offers, nonetheless allowing himself to be dragged along behind her up to their shared street. Unexpectedly, she leads them to his own front door and pushes inside, striding into his living room and perching on one of his comfortable armchairs.

"Janet?" she calls out, and Janet pops into existence. He can't help but let out a distressed whimper, still not at all comfortable with the new laws of physics in this place.

"Hi!" says Janet cheerfully.

"What drink is best for running away from your problems?"

"All of them," beams Janet. 

"I still have that gin," offers the priest, waving the bottle.

"Based on your lives on earth, I suggest you accompany the gin with slimline tonic, lime wedges, and a tube of personal lubricant."

"Only the drinks, thanks," says the priest, just as his neighbour says "perfect."

They look at each other and she suppresses a smirk. He's stunned for a second until he shakes his head and starts to laugh.

"Here you go," says Janet, materialising a tray with a couple of glasses and a bottle of tonic.

"Thank you," says the priest, taking the tray, and Janet blinks away.

"So, do you have a crippling fear of guinea pigs, or...?" he asks, filling their glasses before sinking into the opposite chair.

"Ooh, you've really not understood the idea of running away from your problems."

"Sorry," he grimaces. "Old priest habits."

"What's with the...?" she asks, gesturing vaguely at her neck where the collar would be. "You don't still have to wear that, do you?"

"I guess not, no. I'm just..." He sighs. "Fork, I don't know."

"Running away from your problems?" Her smile is so knowing, it's absolutely infuriating.

"Oh, fork you."

"See, it's actually great."

"Here's to that," he toasts, raising his G&T. She raises hers in return and they share a silent understanding, or a silent commiseration, and then drain their drinks.

"Can I stay here tonight?" she asks quietly, fiddling with her empty glass.

"You don't want to go home?" 

She shakes her head and offers no further explanation. 

"Of course, that's fine," he reassures her, leaning over to top up her drink.

"Thanks," she says, and jumps up from her seat. "Where's your loo?" she asks, heading off along the hallway before waiting for an answer. She pushes open the door to what he belatedly remembers is his unsolicited freaky sex dungeon of a bedroom.

"No, that isn't-"

" _Father_ ," she says, sounding impressed, and heads straight for the chest of drawers at the end of the room, perusing the contents with interest. She clicks a button and the sound of buzzing suffuses the room, and she giggles delightedly before switching the vibrator back off. She carries on digging around, bending over to root in the deep bottom drawers. "Oh my god!" she exclaims, "I always wanted one of these, you just sit on it and it-"

"Could you please get the fork out of there?" he snaps. 

"OK, OK," she says, straightening and raising her hands in surrender. "Jesus."

"Thank you," he says more calmly as she steps out of the room and closes the door, with one last lingering look at the handcuffs hanging on the wall.

"Why do you even have-"

"I don't _know_ ," he whines, screwing up his face. "They just _gave_ it to me when I got here."

"Can I borrow the-"

"You can take all of it if you want. I can't, I can't, I can't..." he says, casting about helplessly. "I don't want to forking _think_ about all of this right now. Can we please just go to bed?"

She raises an eyebrow.

"Shut up. I'll make up the other sofa for you," he clarifies, stomping off to fuss around in the airing cupboard for clean sheets.

"This is nice," she says later, as they lie on opposite sofas, wrapped in blankets and wearing a pair of his pyjamas. "Feels like a sleepover."

"Shall we paint our nails and talk about boys?"

"I'm up for a game of spin the bottle if you are."

He chuckles and rolls over to burrow deeper into his pillow. "Go the fork to sleep."

* * *

"This is going so well," says Chidi cheerfully, bouncing into Eleanor's living room.

She rouses herself from where she's curled up on the couch under a blanket and sucks the remaining cocktail sauce from her fingers, putting down her bowl of shrimp. "Bring it in, man," she grins sleepily.

Chidi joins her on the sofa and lifts his arm, inviting her to snuggle against his body.

"I mean, I know that I'm only talking to the priest about philosophy to torture him, but he's agreed to sit down and do some comparative theology with me and it's gonna be so much fun!" he enthuses, dropping a kiss onto Eleanor's head. "I've already found the books I'm gonna use and tabbed out the relevant sections, and Janet found me some _really good_ highlighter pens. Torture is great!" He pauses for a second, and his eyes go wide. "I... never thought I'd say that."

"The chaos sequence went really well, too," says Eleanor, gesturing vaguely at the screen, where giant guinea pigs and bottles of wine are thundering down the main street, and glitter and forks explode from the sky. "They're holed up together at his place."

"Do you think he's going to sleep with her?"

"I definitely would," says Eleanor. "I guess I'm not a priest, but she is a forking _smokeshow_."

"You keep saying that. Should I be jealous?" asks Chidi, semi-joking.

Eleanor wrinkles her nose thoughtfully. "Yeah, probably," she admits. "About as jealous as you are of Tahani."

"I'm not jealous of Tahani."

"Really? You should be."

"Anyway," he says pointedly. "I think we can do this."

She presses a kiss to their joined hands. "I think so, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic so far has just been fantastic. I really cherish all your comments and kudos and reblogs and so on - thank you all so much for the encouragement.
> 
> Unrelated, but my other half has that "plink" sound that happens at the start of the titles in The Good Place as their alert tone and I keep having to stop myself from singing the oboe tune that follows. Please send help.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At some point, I should probably go and talk to Eleanor about how the guinea pigs that are destroying the neighbourhood are probably some kind of physical manifestation of my psychic pain, but right now I'm sprawled out over the priest's sofa with a belly full of pancakes while we compare notes on our secondary school war stories. I do not want to move.
> 
> "I'm just _saying_ ," I insist, waving a hand at him listlessly from within my food coma. "Harmless lesbian experimentation with one's peers is supposed to be a mainstay of teenage girl sleepover experiences, but you wouldn't _believe_ how much work I had to put into persuading all of them."
> 
> "A real labour of love, wow," says the priest from behind an enormous mug of tea, basking in the morning light like a large, muscular cat. "I'm not going to ask how you cracked it."
> 
> Strip Twister, but whatever.

At some point, I should probably go and talk to Eleanor about how the guinea pigs that are destroying the neighbourhood are probably some kind of physical manifestation of my psychic pain, but right now I'm sprawled out over the priest's sofa with a belly full of pancakes while we compare notes on our secondary school war stories. I do not want to move.

"I'm just _saying_ ," I insist, waving a hand at him listlessly from within my food coma. "Harmless lesbian experimentation with one's peers is supposed to be a mainstay of teenage girl sleepover experiences, but you wouldn't _believe_ how much work I had to put into persuading all of them."

"A real labour of love, wow," says the priest from behind an enormous mug of tea, basking in the morning light like a large, muscular cat. "I'm not going to ask how you cracked it."

Strip Twister, but whatever.

"What do boys do at sleepovers? Pillow fights?"

"We mostly just played Street Fighter."

"Ah, so you spent the night _hadouken_ ing each other." I do my best to make this sound dirty. "Not that different, then."

He gives me a fond look and changes the subject. "Were you a girly girl?"

"Not really. I always quite liked it when people mistook me for a boy. You can get away with a lot more stuff."

"How about these days?"

"You mean, am I a woman-ey woman?"

"Yeah."

I wrinkle my nose for a second, thinking. "It doesn't matter so much any more. I mean, I have the genitals, but... it's great being an adult, I can wear dresses and still climb trees whenever I want and nobody can really stop me."

"That's one good thing about being a priest," he agrees, "you can wear dresses in a lot of situations where it would usually be considered inappropriate."

"They're very freeing, aren't they? As long as you don't mind people seeing your knickers." I never mind people seeing my knickers. 

In fact, I rather encourage it.

"Your discourse on gender is very nuanced," he smirks. "Have you thought of writing a paper on it?"

"Fork you."

I actually like that he's both a man of God and a sarcastic bastard. Very well-rounded.

Once I've recovered from the pancakes, I reluctantly bid him goodbye to make my way up to Eleanor's office to come clean about the guinea pig debacle.

"If you want to talk more, I'll be here," he assures me as I walk out of his door, waving to me like a huge dork. 

I'm so in there.

Eleanor is nowhere to be found when I arrive, but Michael is pacing the room in a bit of a tizzy.

"Come in, I'm so sorry about all this," he says, waving me through the door. "I don't know what's gone wrong in the neighbourhood!" he frets. "It's supposed to be a paradise, not some horrible swamp full of rodents of unusual size."

"R.O.U.S.'s? I doubt they exist," I say automatically.

"What?"

"Never mind. Look, this was definitely my fault."

"Oh, that's nice of you to say," he says faintly, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief, "but it must have been us."

"Michael, I'm not nice," I say intensely. "That's my _point_. I forked up every good thing in my life and now I'm _forking up heaven_. You need to _reassess me_."

He sits down at his desk with a heavy sigh. I can tell he doesn't believe me, but he wants to make me feel better. "Fine," he huffs. "I'll ask you some questions about your life on earth and then we can go through the main points-affecting actions you made and we'll see if we made a mistake, but I just don't think that's what the problem is."

He brings out a little cube, which glows white as he places it down on the desk between us.

"Right, I guess we should start with the basics." He consults a list in front of him, written in an incomprehensible language. "Have you ever 'liked' a tweet that was written by Piers Morgan?"

"Ugh, no." The little box honks and turns green.

"OK. Have you ever scanned an item at the self-service checkout at the supermarket as carrots, to avoid paying full price?"

I have to think about that one for a second - it sounds like the kind of thing I would do, but it had never really occurred to me. "No?" I say eventually. The box honks green again. Phew.

"Did you ever become emotionally invested in an episode of the Jeremy Kyle show?"

"No." I mean, I have watched it, but if you want me to get emotionally invested in a TV show you have to make the people more attractive.

He puts down his pen. "See, you've done very well on the preliminary questions, but I guess we can still check your file." He flips through the sheaf of papers in front of him. "OK, here's the main list of point-losing activities from your time on Earth. It all seems fairly standard, nothing that really stands- oh," he finishes, alighting on one entry.

This is it, this is where he finally finds out about Boo, and what I did, and-

"It says here that you once slut-shamed... a _pizza_?" he says incredulously, screwing up his face to squint at the page.

I'm stunned into silence for a second. He's not actually wrong, though. "I didn't do it _out loud_ ," I manage weakly.

"Yeah, well, it still counts," he says, scanning through the text. "OK, maybe this needs another looking over, but I really don't think you have anything to worry about. Why don't you go out and enjoy the sunshine?"

"That pizza was asking for it," I mumble as I walk out of the door.

"That cannot possibly be the case," Michael calls out after me.

* * *

Whenever I need to clear my head, I go for a run. There's a cleanup operation going on in the town square, but nobody asks me to help, so I don't have to. This place is full of nice little paths and big green fields to jog through, and I power through them as fast as I can, lungs burning. How fast do you have to run before you can outrun your problems?

I used to go jogging through the graveyard every day, pop in and say hi to mum and then get on my way. It wasn't a big deal, it was just a convenient place to run.

There's a huge tree on the outskirts of the neighbourhood, with a broad, sturdy nook in the centre that looks like it would be comfortable to sit in. Remembering my earlier conversation with the priest, I decide on a whim to climb it, shinning up the trunk and squeezing between the branches until I make it into the centre, where I can lie down along the wide bough and look out over the landscape. There are trees dotted everywhere, vivid blossoms, vast shimmering lakes, and perfect blades of grass as far as the eye can see.

It's a beautiful place. I'm going to fucking destroy it if someone doesn't stop me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure why my headcanon is that the priest makes really delicious pancakes, but here we are.
> 
> The next chapter will be up next week after I have RECOVERED from the Good Place finale.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not so much that he's upset to discover that the events described in the Bible aren't strictly based in reality - he's heard of fucking dinosaurs before, he's not delusional. It's not the precise veracity of the stories that has grounded him all these years, but the poetry and moral code that the stories represent. In his considerable experience, the human spirit - his, in particular - is a ravenous beast that will destroy every pure and good thing in its path if left unchecked. 
> 
> Take two humans, innocent as babes, and create for them a paradise. Take one temptation, one serpent, one bite of an apple, and watch it all come crashing down. The devil is as a fox among the vineyards, ever whispering, ever tempting. 

The priest was pretty happy with the size of his library right up until the moment he walked into Chidi's and suddenly felt rather inadequate.

"Father!" beams Chidi, tottering into the room holding a gargantuan stack of books. "Could you take-" he says, just before the stack topples over and the books scatter on the floor. "Never mind," he finishes, and sets to work picking them up. 

"Here, let me," says the priest, bending over to scoop up a copy of _Summa Theologica_ and three different versions of the Bible.

"Thank you," says Chidi, ushering him around to take a seat at the desk, behind a stack of lined paper and an ornate green reading lamp. "I figured we should start with original sin because it's, you know, original," he enthuses, opening up a couple of books with colour-coded sticky tabs already littering the pages. "Now, the main difference between the Catholic conception of original sin and the Good Place points system is the idea of obedience, since the Almighty Judge on High of All Beings Living and Dead for All Eternity never actually told human beings what the rules are."

"So this judge... is some kind of God figure?" says the priest tentatively, not entirely sure that he wants to know the answer.

"Kinda!" says Chidi brightly. "I've always wanted to ask her about all that, but nobody's seen her since she started binge-watching _Sherlock_."

"I guess that's a question for another day," he replies, trying not to look too relieved.

"In the eyes of the Good Place," says Chidi, referring to a screen nestled between two bookshelves, "if somebody told you not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and then you did it anyway, you wouldn't necessarily lose any points, as long as the fruit was organic, and you were actually hungry, and nobody was exploited in the tree planting process. If you've had a rigid, obedience-related rules-based system of morality on Earth, is it moral to continue to follow it in the afterlife? Does the concept of morality actually have any place here at all? I mean, take Jianyu - a vow of silence could have any number of effects on his points total down on Earth, both positive and negative. He could avoid saying something that hurts someone's feelings, but he could also _fail_ to say something that could help someone. Is his continuing vow of silence here in the Good Place a truly moral action, or is it just a way for him to cling onto a sense of simplicity in a situation that is entirely outside of his control?"

The priest thinks for a moment, trying to find a literary example for his point. "In the Divine Comedy, once Dante has reached the final region of heaven and transcended physical existence so that he can talk directly to God, the familiar act of praying to the Virgin Mary is still required of him. He doesn't just forking throw away the Scriptures the moment that something unexpected happens. The beauty of having faith is in being steadfast when the world around you is testing your beliefs."

"But surely a part of being a rational scholar of theology is to be able to synthesise new information into an existing belief structure. Take the writings of Copernicus-"

"There's a big difference between accepting that the earth goes around the forking sun and discarding the entire concept of the virtue of obedience."

"That's a really interesting point. Oh, I'm having so much fun talking to you," says Chidi, wriggling delightedly. "Janet?"

"Hi there," says Janet, popping into being.

"Can you please get us some lunch? I think we're gonna be talking for a _long_ time."

* * *

It's mid-afternoon before the priest manages to extract himself from their unsettling study session, citing a need for a brisk constitutional before dinner. He hurries off across the fields before Chidi can change his mind and summon him back to spend more time meticulously dismantling the entire moral basis for his personal system of ethics.

It's not so much that he's upset to discover that the events described in the Bible aren't strictly based in reality - he's heard of fucking dinosaurs before, he's not delusional. It's not the precise veracity of the stories that has grounded him all these years, but the poetry and moral code that the stories represent. In his considerable experience, the human spirit - his, in particular - is a ravenous beast that will destroy every pure and good thing in its path if left unchecked. 

Take two humans, innocent as babes, and create for them a paradise. Take one temptation, one serpent, one bite of an apple, and watch it all come crashing down. The devil is as a fox among the vineyards, ever whispering, ever tempting. 

Access to infinite information in this place seems wrong somehow, no matter how excited Chidi gets about it. It's as though he's receiving wisdom that shouldn't be available to the weak human mind, as well as access to pleasures that he swore he would never...

There's a muffled thump and his neighbour falls out of the nearest tree, springing up from the ground as though nothing had happened and picking leaves off of her crimson dress.

Speaking of temptation.

"Are you OK, Father?" she asks, walking closer. She smells like the outdoors, like freshly mown grass and earth just turned over. 

"Er," he manages. "I'm just..." He shoves his hands into his pockets so that he can't reach out and touch her. "I'm having a really forking weird day. I should probably go home and eat something, I don't know."

"Here," she says, reaching above her head to pluck a ripe, russet apple from a low-hanging branch. She holds out the fruit to him, and he jerks away as though he's been burned, shaking his head.

"Oh, no," he mutters, backing away. "No, no, no, no." He wheels around and starts to jog back down the path, leaving her staring after him with a confused frown. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to the ghost of Dante Alighieri.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's my third day in paradise and honestly, I think I might be bored of pornography.
> 
> I'm feeling slightly more at home in my house than I was, partially due to the aforementioned pornography, but mostly because I've turned all the photos on my mantelpiece face down. Checkmate, feelings.

It's my third day in paradise and honestly, I think I might be bored of pornography.

I'm feeling slightly more at home in my house than I was, partially due to the aforementioned pornography, but mostly because I've turned all the photos on my mantelpiece face down. Checkmate, feelings.

I'd still prefer to be spending the night next door, but I suspect that option isn't on the cards for now. In retrospect, finding a priest that secretly wants to fuck you and then literally handing him a piece of forbidden fruit is probably a bit on the nose. I don't know if he wants to talk to me, but I haven't left the house in order to find out.

I've been trying very hard to keep my mind off things, but there's only so much time that you can fill with bottles of wine and adventurous wanks. 

It turns out my magic TV screen can show me what my loved ones are up to on Earth right at this moment, which is probably the worst thing ever. Boo has so far composed five different songs about my death, which she has been playing on the ukelele to our guinea pig and any hapless customers that foolishly wander into the café. 

Some of them are actually quite catchy.

Dad's stoic, but I caught him having a little cry into his muesli this morning. My godmother has not been able to wipe the fucking smile off her smug face, except for when she's wailed theatrically in public and rended her garments. I bet she'll make an exhibition about this. I bet it'll be successful, too. For fuck's sake.

I flick the channel over to watch Claire striding through her office, somehow having made herself even busier than usual. She's got new ombre highlights since yesterday, which I strongly suspect is her own way of mourning me. It's quite sweet, really.

I hear a knock and have to pause the screen to go and investigate. I open the door and Tahani swoops in, kissing me on both cheeks and sitting down daintily on my sofa, settling her skirts around her like a fainting Victorian romance novel heroine. "Oh, is that a family member?" she asks, noticing the screen. "She looks just like you. What an unusual choice of hairstyle!"

"My sister," I say tightly, clicking off the screen and hoping that she'll change the subject. She does not get the hint and carries on talking.

"I never got on with my sister. I was always too jealous of her, to tell you the truth. I wish we'd been closer. Were you close?"

I snort. "Well, I don't think she was jealous of me."

"Do you miss her?"

"Yeah," I say, surprising myself. "It's like she's... dead. Like they all are. I don't know what to do with all my unfinished... everything."

I could never quite find the right way to be close to Claire. I was always needling her or making jokes, or just generally putting up emotional barriers. She tried to tell me that she loved me, once, and I just made a loud farting sound and left the room. I could have bridged that gap if I'd just tried being sincere for five minutes but it's a bit fucking late now. 

Dying is the worst fucking thing that's ever happened to me.

"Why are you here?" I ask, a little more sharply than I mean to.

"I just came over to see if you would come and join me for a spot of frozen yogurt. I feel like I've barely gotten to know you yet."

"Oh, I wouldn't recommend getting to know me."

"Come on, let's try out some of the new flavours. They've got sprinkles that taste the way it feels to perfectly dip a Rich Tea biscuit into your tea so that it's soft, but it doesn't fall in."

Sold.

Tahani seems entirely at home as we walk through the neighbourhood arm-in-arm, and she starts telling me a long-winded story that is probably supposed to impart some life advice, but mostly is just a litany of the names of famous people she was acquainted with on Earth. 

"It's like I said to my friend Andrew Scott and my _best_ friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge," she's saying. "Sometimes you just have to sit down in a Quaker hall and think about tits." 

"OK?"

"On reflection, that might not be a universally applicable piece of advice. Still, there we are." She brightens as we approach the restaurant and begins to describe to me the flavours available and what she thinks various members of the British royal family would think of them.

My eyes alight on the priest, who is sitting under a sun umbrella and gingerly poking at a bowl of frozen yogurt. He notices us and gives a sheepish grin.

"Oh look, it's Father," Tahani coos, and swoops in to kiss the priest on both cheeks. "How lovely to see you here."

"Hello," he says, giving me an apologetic little wave. 

"Hi," I reply, feeling just as uncomfortable as he looks. "I'm just going to-" I make a move to walk inside the restaurant but Tahani stops me.

"No, no, sit down and relax, I'll pick up yours for you. I know exactly what you'll like." Tahani boops me lightly on the nose, making me go cross-eyed, and strides inside the restaurant, leaving us alone together. I perch on the chair opposite him and eye him expectantly.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he says after a moment of awkward silence. "I shouldn't have... I was just having a bit of a metaphysical mind-fork of a day."

"It's fine." I'm being magnanimous today. "What flavour did you get?"

"It tastes like beating a traffic warden to your car just when they're on their way to give you a ticket." He picks up a little bit of it on his spoon and holds it out to me. "Here, try some."

I'm really not trying to make eating frozen yogurt off a spoon look sexy, but I guess I just can't help it. His eyes catch on my lips before he clears his throat and looks away.

"Mmm," I say after licking it clean. "Tastes both relieved and a little bit smug."

"Yes," he says in a strangled tone. "It's, uh, it's quite distinctive. You've got, um-" He gestures to my lower lip, where I've left a smudge of yogurt, entirely deliberately.

"Did I get it?" I ask, wiping at my chin.

"No, let me," he says, and reaches over to swipe his thumb over my lip. His hand lingers there, fingers stroking over my jaw, and my lips part ever so slightly as he drags his thumb over them. For a moment, I think he might be about to...

Tahani bustles back over, and he snatches his hand back. "Here you go, darling," she trills. "I went for mint choc chip with a swirl of waking up without a hangover after a night of heavy drinking."

I cannot help the obscene moan I let out on taking a bite of this particular concoction. "That's amazing."

"Oh, I'm so glad you like it!" beams Tahani. "Personally, I went for the flavour of the bee pollen acai bowl my dear friend Meghan made for me once at her home in Frogmore Cottage." 

The priest and I make eye contact and he stifles a laugh.

"It doesn't really matter what she's the Duchess of," she finishes lightly, in a way that she probably thinks is self-effacing. "Now, I must go and ask Eleanor something. I'm so glad you could come out." She kisses us both on the cheeks and departs in a cloud of perfume and self-assurance. 

"I guess I should be-" I say, just as he says "Do you want to go for a drink?"

"Oh," he says, immediately deflating. "If you've got somewhere else you need to-"

"No," I reply, a small smile growing on my face. "A drink... a drink sounds good."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you feel peaceful here?" he asks.
> 
> "Not in the slightest."
> 
> "Maybe we should look for it. Go out on a mission in search of heavenly contentment."
> 
> "If we can find some, I'm all for it," she laughs. "Plus, I definitely need a hobby other than drinking and masturbating."
> 
> "Sure, sure. We can't have you getting a strained wrist, or whatever."

In contrast to the remarkable abundance of frozen yogurt shops in the Good Place, the priest has not yet managed to find a single pub.

"It's basically a forking war crime," he laments as they make their way through the meandering streets back to his house, a bottle of wine shoved in each pocket.

"Maybe we could open one together," she says, inspecting the label of a bottle of Merlot. "I used to run a café, maybe it's the same."

"Maybe," he agrees amiably. "Sounds like a lot of work, though, when we can just drink at home."

"We'd probably be the only customers, anyway."

He opens his front door and they lounge either side of his coffee table, sprawled out on the carpet. "I sometimes wonder if we're the only bastards in heaven," he says, pouring them both a liberal glass of wine.

She lets out a peal of laughter. "I have had the exact same thought."

"I thought I'd feel more peaceful, you know?" he says, leaning back against his sofa and waving his drink for emphasis. "I've reached my eternal rest or whatever... and it's actually really forking stressful."

"At least you know you belong here, after doing all that..." she waves her hand in the air, narrowly avoiding spilling red wine on the carpet. "...priesty stuff when you were alive."

"I'm sure you-"

She cuts him off. "Were you a good priest?"

It takes him a second of thought and several sips of wine before he answers. "Yeah, I think so. I wasn't a great _person_ before that, but I think I made up for it. Were you a good person?"

"Fork no," she laughs. "Someone up there's getting fired for this, I guarantee you."

"Come on, you must have done some good things." 

"I'll let you know if I remember any." They lapse into comfortable silence for a while and he tops up her glass. She looks comfortable propped up against the armchair, loose-limbed and languid.

"Do you feel peaceful here?" he asks.

"Not in the slightest."

"Maybe we should look for it. Go out on a mission in search of heavenly contentment."

"If we can find some, I'm all for it," she laughs. "Plus, I definitely need a hobby other than drinking and masturbating."

"Sure, sure. We can't have you getting a strained wrist, or whatever."

"Here's to peace," she proposes, lifting her glass.

"To peace," he agrees.

* * *

Their first attempt at achieving inner piece does not go well. The priest has the bright idea to ask Jianyu to lead them through a Buddhist meditation. He assents with a bow and brings them into a silent clearing in the opulent grounds of Tahani's mansion, a faint whiff of buffalo sauce suffusing the air around him. He settles them cross-legged on the manicured lawn, spines straight, hands resting lightly on their knees, ready commune with the universe.

Then Jianyu opens his mouth. 

An hour later, they wave him farewell and walk out of the garden, slightly dazed, and continue without speaking for a few minutes.

"So is that a typical Buddhist meditation session?" she asks, breaking their silence.

"Not... in my experience," responds the priest diplomatically. "I don't think it's usual for a monk to use the word "dope" in any context."

"I did find the part about letting go of the swamp alligators in your soul oddly helpful."

"I saw the look you gave me when he said that, you forking menace." In fact, the entire session had been a series of amused, side-eyed glances between the pair of them and a superhuman effort not to laugh.

"What does Bortles mean? Is it Sanskrit?"

"I've never heard it before, but my Sanskrit is absolute shirt, so I can't be sure."

"I know it doesn't mean 'downward-facing dog' but that's all I've got."

"Maybe he had the right idea with the whole... vow of silence thing."

"Definitely."

* * *

Tahani jumps at the chance to get involved in their self-improvement project and immediately insists that the three of them take a spa day together.

"I see you're here for the throuple's massage," says Janet brightly from behind the reception desk in the gleaming, white relaxation centre.

"That's not quite-" says the priest, just as his neighbour says "Fork yeah." He squints at her and she grins unashamedly.

"Janet, we're here to find inner peace," announces Tahani. "Set up the room to be 80% Gwyneth Paltrow's private spa and 20% Paul McCartney's five-dimensional meditation cube."

"Sure!" says Janet. "I'll go find two other Janets for the massage therapy. Go in through that door and undress, then lay face down on the massage tables. We'll be with you in a moment." She pings out of reality and the three peace-seekers head through into the treatment room. The decoration is all bare Norwegian wood and soft lighting, with gentle nature sounds playing in the background and stacks of immensely soft, fluffy towels.

The priest carefully averts his eyes as his neighbour shucks off her dress without a hint of self-consciousness, throwing it onto a chair and unsubtly checking out Tahani as she did the same. 

"Are those your real tits?" she asks.

"Yes," sighs Tahani. "I've always been cursed with a large bosom. It's a nightmare trying to find couture that fits."

"Sure. Difficult."

He manages somehow to take off all of his clothes with a towel wrapped firmly around his waist, drawing an amused, knowing glance. He slides onto the table and covers himself with another towel so that every inch of his body save his head is completely hidden.

"Hi," says Janet, popping back into existence with two other Janets in tow, one in a neat, green pantsuit with a beaming grin, and one in skin-tight leather trousers who was fiddling with her phone. "There weren't two Good Place Janets available, so I've had to borrow one Bad Janet to help out."

"What up, fart-goblins," says Bad Janet. "I'm here to touch your butts."

"Who wants to go first?" asks Good Janet #1.

The priest is amused but not at all surprised to see his neighbour raise her hand.

* * *

Michael's idea for them to find inner peace is to send them out into the centre of the lake in a rowing boat in the middle of a scorching hot day with a picnic basket and instructions to enjoy themselves. At this, they do not entirely succeed.

"How am I sunburned in heaven?" wails the priest later, applying aloe to the peeling red patches on his chest. "This is the most Irish thing to ever happen to anyone."

"How did you get sunburned _through_ your shirt?" she asks, her sure, cold fingers rubbing in soothing circles over his shoulder.

"I don't know," he whines, leaning into her touch as her hands drift over his skin, cooling the burn.

She mutters something that sounds like "his beautiful neck", then clears her throat and turns away to get more lotion. "I don't think Michael has a strong grasp on what it's like to have human skin."

"Well, that's two down. Who should we ask next?"

* * *

"No, nuh-uh," says Chidi firmly as Eleanor paces along his living room.

"Come on, man, it's just one little threesome! What harm could it do?"

"OK, first of all, I would _really_ prefer that our relationship remain monogamous, but most importantly, we're trying to teach her that you _can't_ solve all your problems by ignoring them and just having sex with people."

She scoffs. "Agree to disagree."

"Eleanor..."

" _Fine_ , I'll take them... rollerblading, or whatever, but I maintain that your objection is total _bullshirt_."

* * *

It's about 3AM on a warm, still night, when the priest clambers up the rose trellis and raps on his neighbour's window. Fortunately for his delicate constitution, she is not wearing frilly underthings. Unfortunately for his stupid heart, she's wearing a pair of pyjamas that she stole from his wardrobe, and she looks adorable in them.

"Father," she greets him. "What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my counsel?"

"Fork, I was going to open with 'soft, what light through yonder window breaks', and you ruined it."

"So, wherefore art thou climbing up my forking walls in the middle of the night?" She leans over the windowsill, framed in the warm light from inside, and part of him aches to reach up a little further and meet her red lips in a soft kiss.

"Eleanor asked me to look after her unicorn for her and I've forking lost it," he says instead, pouting forlornly. "Can you come and help me find it?"

"That doesn't explain why you couldn't use the door instead of the window."

He shrugs as well as he is able to while clinging to a wall two storeys off the ground. "This seemed less intrusive."

"It isn't," she laughs. "Can you get back down or do you need me to haul you in?"

"Er, hauling, probably," he admits, and she grabs him by the wrists to yank him inside. Her bedroom is relatively plain and a little untidy, but it smells like mysterious girl things like perfume and body lotion. This entire situation is making his head spin a little (although that might be the altitude).

He perches uncomfortably at the foot of her bed while she hunts around for a matching pair of shoes. "Where did you lose it, and what direction did it go?" she asks as she gropes blindly underneath the bed. 

"Next to the fountain in the town square. I only turned away for a second! I think it forked off towards the lake."

They make their way, via the front door, down towards the water, whispering and walking quietly so as not to disturb the neighbourhood.

"Look," she says, grabbing his arm on spotting a glimmer of silver in the moonlight over the fields. "I think that's it."

They approach carefully, sensibly wary of startling the giant pointy horse. The unicorn seems to pay them no heed, flipping its mane in mild annoyance before pooping out a small, wet rainbow.

"Hey, there," she says in the most soothing voice she can muster, gingerly extending an arm towards the creature. When her hand touches the unicorn's flank, it gives out an almighty whinny and wheels around to look her dead in the eyes, huffing aggressively.

"Fork fork fork fork fork," she mutters under her breath as she backs away rapidly from the beast. "I don't think it likes me."

Quick as a flash, the priest grabs the unicorn's reins and gives them a yank to turn its attention back to him. "Come on," he says sternly. "It's time for you to go home."

The animal rears up and lets out a noise of extreme displeasure, but the priest stands firm and keeps his hold on the reins, using his disappointed-Sunday-school-teacher scowl. Little by little, the unicorn stops bucking and grunting, and allows itself to be led back towards the town square.

"Thanks," she says, walking a little ahead to keep a wary distance away from the creature. "I thought I was about to become unicorn food."

"I don't think they actually eat people." The unicorn let out another aggressive grunt. "Although I'm not entirely sure on that."

"Why does Eleanor even have a feral unicorn?"

"She didn't tell me! She just handed me the forking reins and told me to look after it and forked off!"

"You wrangled it remarkably well."

"I'm surprised I didn't run away, to be honest. I'm not usually good at dealing with things."

She gives him a smile over her shoulder. "You’re braver than you believe, and stronger and smarter than you think," she tells him.

He stops short, making the unicorn give a huff of annoyance. "Is that Winnie the Pooh?" he gasps. "Did you just quote Winnie the Pooh at me?"

"I-"

She can't finish the sentence before he's cupping her cheek and capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. He pours himself into her, the pent-up longing and affection from the last few weeks crashing over them like a wave, each touch of his hands against her skin igniting a fire in his senses. He cards his fingers through her dark curls as she gasps against his mouth, her soft body pressed against his.

The sound of galloping hooves brings them out of their private moment, and they surface to the sight of the unicorn tearing away down the road.

"Oh, fork," they say in unison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me about twice as long to write as I expected, but it's also about twice as many words as I was planning, so I guess that scales linearly.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I spend longer than I'm proud of in front of the mirror making sure that my outfit says "I'm totally fine with whatever happens next because I am a chic, independent woman who is capable of dealing with rejection and not at all liable to start ugly crying." Only a red sundress can say this.
> 
> I head over to rap on his front door and what greets me as he opens the door takes my breath away - he's wearing his usual neatly pressed (delightfully form-fitting) black trousers, and shiny black shoes - but his top half is clad in a loose, open-necked shirt.
> 
> "You're not wearing your special priesty collar thing," I say in lieu of a greeting.
> 
> "Hello," he responds. "No, I'm not." He looks relaxed. Oh god, maybe he's winning at inner peace. Bastard.

I'm pretty sure I am _nailing_ inner peace. I am a meditation machine, I've been eating salad like a motherfucker, and I have entirely sworn off casual sex, although that hasn't really had to be a conscious choice given that nobody in this godforsaken paradise will _fuck me_. It's fine. I don't do that any more.

I did have a little snog with my priest last night, but then we had to run and corral a fucking unicorn, which ruined the mood a bit, and we haven't really talked about it. I got to ride on the unicorn's back all the way home, which was cool right up until it _bit me_. It turns out, I hate unicorns.

We agreed to meet for brunch today after we'd managed to wrangle that horrid creature back into Eleanor's stable and then staggered back to our separate beds, bruised and grubby.

I spend longer than I'm proud of in front of the mirror making sure that my outfit says "I'm totally fine with whatever happens next because I am a chic, independent woman who is capable of dealing with rejection and not at all liable to start ugly crying." Only a red sundress can say this.

I head over to rap on his front door and what greets me as he opens the door takes my breath away - he's wearing his usual neatly pressed (delightfully form-fitting) black trousers, and shiny black shoes - but his top half is clad in a loose, open-necked shirt.

"You're not wearing your special priesty collar thing," I say in lieu of a greeting.

"Hello," he responds. "No, I'm not." He looks relaxed. Oh god, maybe he's winning at inner peace. Bastard.

"Come on in," he continues, ushering me through to his kitchen. The door to his bedroom is open and I can see that the sheets on the bed are mussed. I know for a fact that they weren't like that yesterday because I've been systematically sneaking all of the best sex toys out of his cupboards when he isn't looking.

He motions for me to sit down at the kitchen table, where there's a stack of waffles and bacon waiting, then sits down next to me and rests his hand on my knee.

"What's wrong with you?" I ask. "Did I solve all your hang-ups with my magic lips?"

"No," he laughs.

"Was it the unicorn? Did it poop on you?"

"You _know_ it forking pooped on me, you were laughing your head off."

"Did the magical unicorn poop solve all your hang-ups?"

He makes a noise that is part-way between fond and exasperated. "Would you please take this seriously for a minute?"

"That's not really my strong suit."

He gives me a look.

"Fine, what?"

He takes my hand and looks me in the eyes. "I've just realised that for the first time since I've been here, I've finally started to feel hopeful again." His thumb traces over mine, warm skin brushing over warm skin. "I think that has... a lot to do with you."

I don't really know what to say so I shove half a waffle in my mouth. 

"You've never really tried to follow half of the rules that I've spent so much time living by. You're so passionate and loving and uninhibited, and none of that has stopped you from being a good person." Wrong. "So maybe I don't need the rules _or_ the collar, maybe I can let myself..."

I manage to swallow and cut him off before he can say anything else. "I am _not_ a good person." Tears are pricking at the corners of my eyes and the guilt is gripping my heart like a vice.

The softness in his gaze is unbearable. "I _know_ that you are."

"That is such _bullshirt_. You don't know what I've _done_."

"So tell me."

"I _forked_ my best friend's boyfriend and then she tried to _walk into forking traffic_ ," I spit. "I lived my life _all wrong_."

He holds my hand tighter and doesn't drop his gaze. "Everybody makes mistakes."

"Oh, fork off."

"Thinking of yourself as a good person terrifies you, doesn't it?"

"It doesn't _terrify_ me, I'm just _not one_."

"You're impressive," he says simply, with so much sincerity that for a second I almost believe him. He raises our joined hands to his lips and drops a kiss onto my fingers.

"Tell me about Boo," he says gently.

I sniff, a few tears having forced their way out of my eyes, and let out a breathless laugh. "I think she might have been my favourite person ever."

"How did she feel about that?"

"You can't just _tell_ people how you _feel_ , are you insane?"

He nods. "Right, good point, sorry." I laugh wetly. Sarcastic bastard. 

"I should have told her."

"Who knows, maybe she'll end up here too. Maybe you can still tell her."

"Probably. She was always the best one out of the two of us. " I reflect for a second. "I keep meaning to ask if my mum's here. She died a while ago."

"Why haven't you?"

"I just..."

"What?"

"What if she doesn't want to see me?"

"She will," he says with certainty.

"I'm not ready to find out."

"I understand," he says, bumping me with his shoulder. "Now eat your waffles before they go soggy."

* * *

To my surprise, heaven is a terrible place to engage in a courtship.

After we finish breakfast, he cradles my face with his maple syrup-sticky fingers and kisses me fiercely, crowding me up against the cabinets. I push him backwards until he's lying on his back on the kitchen table and I'm looming over him on all fours, and he's just working his hands up the length of my thighs and rucking up the hem of my skirt when Michael knocks on the window.

"What?" snaps the priest, unusually irritated - which is quite a compliment, really.

"Oh, I'm so sorry to intrude," frets Michael, wringing his hands. "There's been an infestation of interdimensional termites and you need to evacuate the building right now before it collapses." On cue, with a creak, a ceiling beam comes crashing down, inches from my head.

One afternoon as we're camped out on my sofa arguing about _Doctor Who_ , the pesky termites having been dealt with somehow, he pulls me onto his lap and we're just getting into a very promising make-out session when Tahani pounces, sweeping in through the door with a wicker basket. She pulls tall cake stands and the makings for an entire high tea out of the improbably small space, like Mary Poppins' handbag or possibly the TARDIS, then proceeds to ply us with scones, tiny sandwiches, and tedious conversation for the entire afternoon.

A few days afterwards, after a lot of discussion and negotiation, the priest is strapping my wrists into a set of padded leather cuffs and fastening me securely to the posts of his ridiculous bed. I'm half-naked already, my tits exposed through the open buttons of my shirt (his shirt, I stole it), my knickers are most of the way off, and he's got his teeth sunk into the side of my neck, when Jianyu opens the door and walks calmly into the room.

"What the fork?" I ask, trying to shoo him away with my mind. Jianyu just bows deeply and settles cross-legged in a corner, then begins to silently meditate while staring directly at us. Honestly, I would be fine with carrying on, but the priest gets a little self-conscious, so he just unshackles me quietly and we leave the room. Total clit-block.

When Chidi interrupts us, we aren't even doing anything sexy - we put together a nice picnic basket and are comfortably ensconced on a large tartan blanket next to one of Tahani's enormous fountains, sharing a quiche and talking about everything and nothing. I'm staring into his gorgeous brown eyes like a complete sap as he enthuses about Charles Dickens and it's one of those perfect moments when it seems like you're the only people in the world.

"Hey, you two," says Chidi, plopping himself down onto the blanket and proving me wrong. "I'm so glad I ran into you, I have all these new books I want to go over with someone!" I groan and bury my head in the priest's lap and bid goodbye to our romantic afternoon.

A week or so later, we stay up late for a very nice dinner at the clam chowder brasserie, and walk home hand-in-hand through the winding, cobbled streets. I end up pinned into the alcove just inside my front door, being consensually mauled by my neighbour, who's sucking little bruises into my collarbone and pressing his knee in between my thighs in just the right way...

At this moment, Eleanor bursts in the door to tell us that the unicorn is giving birth and she needs us on hand to cut the umbilical cord.

Later, we fall asleep as soon as we hit the sheets, after taking off our elbow-length plastic gloves and showering off the amniotic glitter that somehow got into every crevice of our bodies. We wake up achy and exhausted, and he buries his face in my neck and groans.

"I wish there was some way we could just be alone for 24 hours," he murmurs into my skin.

I have an idea. "Janet? Is there somewhere that we can go that's not here?"

* * *

We alight the train in a huge empty field and trek for what seems like an eternity in the burning sunshine. The priest is fidgeting and rubbing the back of his neck - his skin is probably already starting to burn, so I bump him with my shoulder and flop my hat over his head. The big sunflower on the brim quite suits him, actually.

Finally, we come across a neat little house surrounded by flowers, and rap on the door. It's opened by a wild-looking man in a tuxedo, holding a martini glass full of fridge magnets. 

"Good Derek," he says politely. "How may I Derek you today?"

"Uh-" I begin.

"Derek, go and stand in the closet and be quiet," says a sharp voice. A walking set of shoulder pads comes to the door and smiles at us insincerely. Derek stomps away, muttering "Maximum Derek" to himself, over and over.

"Is he OK?" asks the priest, peering around the corner.

"No, his brain is wrong and he has a musical instrument for a penis."

"Is that a euphemism?" I ask. I knew a guy like that once.

"No," she says flatly. "How can I help you fine people? Come right on in. Do you like cocaine?"

* * *

"So you're telling me, you're here on some kind of fucked-up honeymoon?"

"I can swear here?" gasps the priest. "Thank fuck."

"Too fucking right," I agree, and he cups my face and kisses me. Mindy makes retching sounds in the background, but she's coked up to her eyeballs at this point so I don't think much of it.

"We just need to borrow your spare room for a day," I say, as the priest rubs little circles over the base of my skull with his thumb. "Or maybe two days."

"I don't know why they keep interrupting us," he pouts. I want to bite his lip. "We're supposed to be having a good time."

"Oh my God," she drawls, sounding unbelievably bored, "it's as though you're not even _in_ the Good Place at all."

We turn to her, wide-eyed and gaping.

"Oh please," she scoffs. "You would have figured it out ages ago if you weren't too busy-" She makes an obscene, but very accurate, hand gesture. "I mean, I looked it up, and there have been literally no Catholic priests who have made it into the Good Place. _Ever_."

"I wasn't the _bad_ kind of priest," he mumbles, but my mind is too busy whirring to pay attention.

"We're being tortured," I say slowly. "That makes a lot more sense." We're just digesting this information when there's a knock on the door. Mindy frowns and strides over to open it.

"Hi," says Janet cheerily, waving at us. "I have a message for you from Eleanor - she says it's time for you to find out the truth. Please come with me."

Derek appears, walking backwards out of the bedroom ."Well, well, well," he announces. "Janet, Janet, Janet, Janet. Janet, Janet, Janet, Janet Janet."

"Go away, Derek," says Janet firmly. "I do not want to talk to you."

"Janet Janet Janet," he continues.

" _Leave_."

He deflates. "OK, Mommy-ex-girlfriend," he says, sounding like a lost little boy. "Take this, to remember me by." He hands her the glass full of magnets, which she grabs from him and stalks off towards the train station.

"We could just stay here and fuck forever," I say to the priest. I'm only 50% serious.

"Come on," he says, jerking his head towards the door and giving me one of his crooked smiles. After saying our goodbyes to Mindy, we trail reluctantly behind Janet and take a seat on the train. I toy idly with two of the magnets out of the martini glass.

"I don't want this all to end," I say quietly.

"Me neither," he says, taking my hand. 

The train jolts as it rounds a corner and abruptly the magnets fly out of my grip and adhere firmly to Janet's forehead. She twitches and jerks, pulling levers on the control panel at random. 

We watch in horror as the train speeds up and misses the next station entirely, careening out of control down the tracks.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Janet? Janet, what the fork is happening?" bellows the priest, leaping up and pulling her away from the control panel.
> 
> "How do we stop it?" yells his neighbour, flipping some levers back to their original positions.
> 
> "Is that a brake?" He grabs at a huge, heavy lever in the floor and hefts it downwards with all his strength. The train begins to slow, but with an almighty screech of metal, the wheels leave the tracks and the carriage skews sideways. There's a sheer rock wall of mountainside approaching, far too rapidly for them to stop in time.

"Janet? Janet, what the fork is happening?" bellows the priest, leaping up and pulling her away from the control panel.

"How do we stop it?" yells his neighbour, flipping some levers back to their original positions.

"Is that a brake?" He grabs at a huge, heavy lever in the floor and hefts it downwards with all his strength. The train begins to slow, but with an almighty screech of metal, the wheels leave the tracks and the carriage skews sideways. There's a sheer rock wall of mountainside approaching, far too rapidly for them to stop in time. He throws her back towards the opposite side of the carriage and throws himself over her, shielding her body with his own. 

"I forking love you," he says as the impact hits them.

"I love you too-" she manages to gasp, just as they take their last breath together-

A loud buzzer goes off. 

All at once, the train and the mountain dissolve into thin air and the two humans are deposited unceremoniously on the marble floor of Tahani's main foyer. The room around them erupts into cheers and someone lets off a party popper.

"Congratulations," says Eleanor, helping them to their feet.

The priest only has eyes for his lover, brushing off imaginary debris from her unsullied clothes and kissing her unharmed forehead feverishly. She laughs and pecks at his lips again and again, then grabs the back of his neck and reels him in for a deep, hot kiss. They carry on for a while, hands sliding over flesh and mouths devouring each other, until someone behind them coughs uncomfortably and they reluctantly bring their attention back to the room at large.

"We know this isn't the Good Place," she says steadily, crossing her arms across her chest.

"No," says Tahani. "This has been a test, and you" - she boops both of their noses - "have just passed with flying colours."

"You know, you were a real tough nut to crack," says Michael, looking delighted and tugging on his bow tie. "That's why we had to get the whole soul squad in. This is actually the fifth time that you've both been through the system, but the first time that we put you together."

"That was my idea!" says Jianyu, beaming delightedly. "I figured, I've been a _dope_ person ever since I met my girl-"

"Not a girl," corrects Janet.

"-and I was like, woah, we should do this for these guys and make them talk about their problems!"

"Good job, bud," says Eleanor with only a hint of condescension. He holds his hand up for a high five and she returns it. "Would you like to see some highlights of your previous tests?"

"I guess?"

She flings up a hovering screen and the two test subjects are displayed in side-by-side split-screen. On the right, the priest is shown cowering inside a crudely-dug hole in the earth, walling himself in using stacks of bibles. On the left, she streaks naked through the town square, screaming at the top of her lungs. The images shift, and she is now curled up in bed weeping, spooning a bottle of wine the size of a Newfoundland, while he is fleeing from a ravening fox, pushing other residents and, at one point, a baby, out of his way in his panic.

"As you can see, you did _very_ badly in the previous reboots," says Chidi, not unkindly.

"It doesn't feel like any time had passed," says the priest. "How can we have gone through this so many times?" 

Eleanor mutters something that sounds like, but cannot possibly actually be, "Jeremy Bearimy". 

"Time is... complicated," she says eventually.

"The important thing is, you've passed, and now we're sending you to the _real_ Good Place," enthuses Michael, gripping them both by the shoulder. "Let's take a look at your change in points totals." He waves a hand at the screen and a graph with two lines appears. "Now, you both had to overcome your tendencies to run away from your problems - you with a rigid set of moral codes that left you with no room to trust your own instincts, and you by having sex with literally everything that moves."

She shrugs, not disagreeing with his point.

"Once we put you together you really started to engage with your actual issues and become emotionally vulnerable, and that's when you really started earning points. That love declaration at the end there really gave you both a boost, really nice little bonus."

"Nice little bonus?" says the priest weakly. His partner reaches for his hand and squeezes it.

"We've called the Good Place transport for you," explains Tahani, ushering them towards the buffet table. "It should be here any minute, but first you should each have some cake and a glass of champagne."

The cake is elaborately iced with the words "YOU'RE ADEQUATE", but it is at least delicious. They get through quite a few glasses of champagne and an uncomfortable number of compliments from the other partygoers before the cry goes up that the transport has arrived. 

They are led to the town square, where a colossal golden hot air balloon is just touching down onto the cobblestones. 

Eleanor makes an exaggerated pair of finger guns. "Once you've settled in there, you should definitely come and look me up."

"I'm standing _right here_ ," grumbles Chidi.

"Are you ready?" asks the priest, ignoring them both and turning to his lover.

She reflects on this for a moment and then drains her drink. Placing down the glass, she grabs his hand. "Yeah."

"Yeah," he agrees, and they step into the golden hot air balloon together.

A chorus of goodbyes surrounds them as the burner roars to life and the basket begins to lift them into the atmosphere. 

"What do you think it's going to be like?" he murmurs, looking into her eyes rather than at the landscape unrolling beneath them. 

"We might finally be able to fork without an audience. Unless..." she bites her lip and smirks.

"No, no, no, no, I don't want an audience," he chuckles, drawing her into his arms. They look out over the night sky, and the stars coalesce into words. 

"Welcome! You are now entering the Good Place."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate last line: "What the fork? Is that puppy flying?"
> 
> We made it! Thanks for all your comments and reblogs throughout this whole thing, it's been a great ride. Subscribe to my profile if you want to keep up with my fics, or come and check me out on [the Tumblr](https://this-is-a-love-story-fleabag.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your favourite lines in the comments!


End file.
